Books became less expensive and literacy rates rose, creating a surge in available literature and a more expansive reading audience.
Main authors
William Shakespeare
"Macbeth"
Christopher Marlowe
"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
Sir Walter Raleigh
"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
John Donne
"A Valediction Forbidding Mourning"
Robert Herrick
"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"
Andrew Marvell
"To His Coy Mistress"
John Milton
"When I Consider How My Light is Spent"
Edmund Spencer
Main Ideas
Humanism
Carpe Diem
Moral Purity
Free will
Search for truth
Pastoral
Idealized version of farm life
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning BY JOHN DONNE As virtuous men pass mildly away,And whisper to their souls to go,Whilst some of their sad friends do sayThe breath goes now, and some say, No: So let us melt, and make no noise,No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;'Twere profanation of our joysTo tell the laity our love. Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,Men reckon what it did, and meant;But trepidation of the spheres,Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love(Whose soul is sense) cannot admitAbsence, because it doth removeThose things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined,That our selves know not what it is,Inter-assured of the mind,Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one,Though I must go, endure not yetA breach, but an expansion,Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two soAs stiff twin compasses are two;Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no showTo move, but doth, if the other do. And though it in the center sit,Yet when the other far doth roam,It leans and hearkens after it,And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must,Like th' other foot, obliquely run;Thy firmness makes my circle just,And makes me end where I begun.
"A Valediction Forbidding Morning" is a loving exchange of parting words between the narrator, a man soo to embark on a lengthy voyage, and his wife. The narrator commits literary conceit to emphasis the strength of his relationship with his wife by comparing the love they share with a plethora of other things that bear no resembles to their relationship, such as dying soldiers parting from their friends or twin compasses. The wide range of metaphors shows how far spread the narrator believes the prominence of the love he and his wife share for each other is and how, regardless of where he is positioned on this Earth, his love for her will be present and unwavering.
Sources:
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
BY JOHN DONNE
As virtuous men pass mildly away,And whisper to their souls to go,Whilst some of their sad friends do sayThe breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise,No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;'Twere profanation of our joysTo tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,Men reckon what it did, and meant;But trepidation of the spheres,Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love(Whose soul is sense) cannot admitAbsence, because it doth removeThose things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,That our selves know not what it is,Inter-assured of the mind,Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,Though I must go, endure not yetA breach, but an expansion,Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two soAs stiff twin compasses are two;Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no showTo move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,Yet when the other far doth roam,It leans and hearkens after it,And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,Like th' other foot, obliquely run;Thy firmness makes my circle just,And makes me end where I begun.
"A Valediction Forbidding Morning" is a loving exchange of parting words between the narrator, a man soo to embark on a lengthy voyage, and his wife. The narrator commits literary conceit to emphasis the strength of his relationship with his wife by comparing the love they share with a plethora of other things that bear no resembles to their relationship, such as dying soldiers parting from their friends or twin compasses. The wide range of metaphors shows how far spread the narrator believes the prominence of the love he and his wife share for each other is and how, regardless of where he is positioned on this Earth, his love for her will be present and unwavering.
Sources:
https://sites.google.com/site/mrramirezsaplit/eras-movements/1500-1670-renaissance
http://shelbyap.blogspot.com/2009/04/renaissance-rebirth.html
http://www.xaviersaints.org/hayes/2013/02/05/renaissance-notes/